Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights'
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry
Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April
27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity'
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take
Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett
(1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something
of a documentarian, if he’s...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
a month ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,...
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
3 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
This Space
39 Books: 2017
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Larkin Was a Larrikin'
At age ten
or so I had a pen pal, a girl from New South Wales, Australia. We both wrote in
pencil on...
11 months ago
At age ten
or so I had a pen pal, a girl from New South Wales, Australia. We both wrote in
pencil on lined paper, and we met through our respective newspapers in
Cleveland and Sydney. The correspondence lasted for a year or so and I don’t
remember what either of us ever said to...
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about...
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here'
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had
us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation,
whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes
In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
a year ago
In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
The American Scholar
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature'
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to...
7 months ago
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take
a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern
English language...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath'
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved,...
2 weeks ago
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other
structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened,
carapaced,” to...
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
2 weeks ago
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
9 months ago
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have been minds to manipulate."
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
5 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,...
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries. I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't...
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. ...
4 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead:
On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this
exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.'
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the...
4 days ago
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the January 2025 issue of The
New Criterion.:
“Rickard
often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to
speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him'
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s...
5 months ago
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she
continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough.
Everybody wants to look for failure...
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
11 months ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5
...
a month ago
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History'
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has
had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be
chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chevengur'
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
11 months ago
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
4 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness'
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation...
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was
already reading the book. The email bounced back...
Ben Borgers
Why Do I Care About Grades?
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
The Power of an Audacious Goal
I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love...
over a year ago
I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love pursuing opportunities that take me beyond my comfort zone. The funny thing about going beyond your comfort zone is that once you’ve done it once or twice, you redefine your comfort...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015.
for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be in Some Respect Unique'
“[L]et us
not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of
units...
10 months ago
“[L]et us
not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of
units separable and (under close scrutiny) distinguishable one from another.”
I work with professors of statistics, among others, for whom data are the primal substance of the human world. You...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote...
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
11 months ago
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being."
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but...
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but with a big grain of salt.
Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.”
This seems to be an aspirational...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion'
“Whenever in
my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely
depressed,...
5 months ago
“Whenever in
my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely
depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without
any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly
existence, in the house of some friend of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Matter of Nobody’s Style But Her Own'
“It is not
only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets
in spring...
10 months ago
“It is not
only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets
in spring evenings when the windows were opened) but the world in which they
sounded, and the young ears they sounded for. I shall never forget how
beautiful they were or what they meant to...
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Doesn't Want to Read'
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a...
a year ago
In a comment
on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:
“Is that a ‘lover
of books’ because they are books? A lover of reading books? A lover of reading
certain books? What makes one bibliophile more of a bibliophile than another?
Size of the...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Brio Enough Here'
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an...
a year ago
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an energy drink. We have an Italian restaurant in Houston called Brio. My
Italian dictionary translates it as “zest” and the OED gives “liveliness, vivacity, ‘go.’” It
suggests...
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do."
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
3 weeks ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
The Perry Bible...
Clicked
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
Wuthering...
Ovid's Amores and Marlowe's Ovid - Love slack’d my muse
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter...
10 months ago
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter Green in The Erotic Poems
(1982) and Christopher Marlowe as Ovid’s Elegies (1599). A statement of purpose:
I, Ovid, poet of my wantonness,
Born at Peligny, to write more address.
So...
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it?
Compare this wording:
Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible.
To this wording:
Unless I hear otherwise,...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in...
6 months ago
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore
certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but
because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School'
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS
bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from
a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish
outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the...
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
5 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our...
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his might revealing the extent of his degradation."
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes'
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When
I play a CD, I listen and never treat
it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second
atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a
big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers). Both movements were popular in the Roman
Republic as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words'
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):
“When books
have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading
and even speaking have been replaced
By other,
less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find...
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm'
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still...
11 months ago
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who
can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has
published reviews and essays devoted to...
The Elysian
How many hours a week do you (actually) spend on your salary job?
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who...
5 months ago
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who work salary jobs work significantly fewer tha…
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation'
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer...
a year ago
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and
tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to
me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical
literature. I had never heard of him, partly
because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean
satire” even though...
The American Scholar
American Horror Story
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
a month ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
over a year ago
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian traffic in Golden to break, in the same way that if a machine on a manufacturing line breaks, adjacent components need to stop, or it will also malfunction.
The topic of parking (at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
2 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
This Space
39 Books: 1994
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean...
4 months ago
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean Resort
Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman
Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he
snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
7 months ago
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or...
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and...
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation.
Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself?
Yes. Maybe.
There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
This Space
The last novel
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
12 months ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism'
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much...
4 months ago
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian
erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to
respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts,...
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of
Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day. He asked annoying questions, he rejected
material...
The American Scholar
Acting Out
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen
The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two things:
The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence
Most dangerous books of 2016
Tactical Silence
I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)'
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
11 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The
range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply
it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Bitten
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks. A medical deadline approaches. That will help.
As usual, I read good books.
PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP
Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd...
7 months ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader'
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it,...
6 months ago
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists,
first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call
it—by which a man rises to understand...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Used to Stand in Front of the Windows'
In my dream I
was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would
bleach the...
11 months ago
In my dream I
was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would
bleach the color from the cover of a book. At the center of a display that
seemed to be made of cotton gauze was not just any book but a first edition of Ulysses. In the rare books collection...
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘A Pocket Universe’
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,”...
7 months ago
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,” a 1969 poem by James Hayford (Star in the Shed Window: Collected Poems 1933-1988, New England Press, 1989):
“May the next book you read
Be what you need—
“A pocket...
The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience'
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers...
a year ago
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an
expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long
ago propounded, tested, established,...
Josh Thompson
Do Not Work in Isolation
I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid...
over a year ago
I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid it, but I absolutely don’t like criticism, or being disappointing, or any of those things.
If my ego were making all decisions, I would move even slower than I do today into “new”...
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Last Laugh
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night.
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
12 hours ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791). First, David Hawkes, the original translator
of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job. Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin,
dies,...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals are an extension of my
October goals.
October was good (
October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has...
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of
lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from
the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed...
4 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost'
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups...
8 months ago
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at
least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the
latter were always Germans and...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.)
I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of 2023
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of...
a year ago
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literature of the present comprises only a tiny fraction of my own reading, here are a...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com.
This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I...
over a year ago
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I had
three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago:
October goals:
Programming
I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote.
At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office.
Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Vacuum with American Light'
Edward Hopper
is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so
many of...
7 months ago
Edward Hopper
is often a favorite painter of literary-minded people because, I suspect, so
many of his works suggest in-media-res excerpts from larger narratives. Looking
as his paintings is like opening a novel to a memorable scene,
without access to backstory or subsequent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death'
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished,
no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning
reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without
once using any of...
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you.
It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown'
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been
moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:
“O friend
unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of...
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words'
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely...
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I
noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry?
We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on What Books Give Us and the Heart of Wisdom
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to...
a year ago
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to learn how to live — how to love and how to suffer, how to grieve and how to be glad. We read to clarify ourselves and to anneal our values. We read for the assurance that others...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel'
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of...
7 months ago
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually
snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The
effect, sometimes satirical, was...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It...
over a year ago
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills.
Why do social skills matter?
Most people get...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are
“shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that
his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of
“profound...
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work.
Almost as many...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
3 months ago
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of
school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald
Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things'
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every
possible situation. Montaigne.”
I could have
signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in
the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
10 months ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to...
"Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
a year ago
"Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World'
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course,...
a year ago
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider
themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and
Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Confined to Famous Defunct Chefs'
Never underestimate
the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence,...
a year ago
Never underestimate
the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence, of
course, when the will to disagree and provoke comes naturally. It’s enormously entertaining
to the provokers, irritatingly tiresome to the rest of us. We outgrow it or at
least it...
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
3 weeks ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments...
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s a Person of Joy, a Fanatic'
Unlike my
sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music
is good,...
a year ago
Unlike my
sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music
is good, that’s what I’m doing, listening. Otherwise, I don’t need a soundtrack
for my life. I would find that annoyingly attention-splitting. What I do
instead is periodically take a break...
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'm Not a Funny Man'
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad...
12 months ago
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad observations you want to immediately endorse or
dismiss, but if “humor” is defined liberally and we accept it as a spectrum ranging
from the driest wit to slapstick, farce and bawdy,...
The American Scholar
The Creator’s Code
Are humans alone in their ability to make art?
The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
Are humans alone in their ability to make art?
The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
But the Moon rescues others as they swim from below - a glance at the essays and dialogues of...
The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch,
famous for his extraordinary...
a year ago
The great ragged Greek philosophy readalong ends with Plutarch,
famous for his extraordinary Parallel Lives but also the innovative
author of a large mass of essays and dialogues which picked up the title Moralia
(late 1st C.) along the way.
Plutarch was hardly an original...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep'
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is...
11 months ago
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful
motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on...
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on 2017
thoughts on going into 2018
book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year
I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense'
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
6 months ago
“Most poetry
is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so
aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be
altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I
am always hesitant to make them...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside'
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph
of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with
luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community
The one where communes aren't the answer.
6 months ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”.
But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants'
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I...
5 months ago
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was
coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster
Mark!”...
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fundamental Truth of His Periodic Law”
My middle
son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second
lieutenant in...
a year ago
My middle
son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second
lieutenant in the Marine Corps, now in training at Quantico, and spends his weekends
rock climbing in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This lends a
pleasing symmetry to his life, as one...
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
2 weeks ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil
The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer'
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick.
I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim
1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in
a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed:
Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems
Abstract:
Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.”
Jr. Devs, or as...
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
2 hours ago
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
4 months ago
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously
ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink
and never smoked. Among the last things I...
Josh Thompson
Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and...
over a year ago
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and concepts from Nate’s book and working on applying the lessons to the app I work on in my day job.
I had a chance to attend Nate’s workshop in Denver a few days ago, as well; while...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
9 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Actually Read the Dictionary'
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English...
a year ago
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English Dictionary. Was this mere
bravado, another instance of Sacks polishing his image as a lovable, learned
eccentric? Or, like his friend W.H. Auden, was he gleaning the dictionary...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too'
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he...
10 months ago
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he was
reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him
silently reading and never...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me'
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves...
9 months ago
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the
service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making
process is “style.” Good work can come out...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a month ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
3 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Just to Sweeten the Cup'
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage...
a week ago
“It is to be
remembered,” Ford Madox Ford writes in The
March of Literature (1939), “that a passage of good prose is a work of art
absolute in itself and with no more dependence on its contents than is a fugue
of Bach, a minuet of Mozart, or the writing for piano of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL'
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of...
2 months ago
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page
pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard
reviews various twentieth-century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Take Measure of the Loss'
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of...
10 months ago
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969)
was M. Scott Momaday, a former Winters graduate student at Stanford who was
then thirty-five years old. Winters, who died in 1968, also considered...
The American Scholar
The Scales
The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise?
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel"
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
This Space
39 Books: 2009
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
7 months ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
The Perry Bible...
Please
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
6 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
This Space
39 Books: 1992
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.*
Many of...
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
This Space
The end of literature, part three
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of My Kidney'
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth...
7 months ago
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his
white lab coat was his name, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then Became a Name Like Others Slain'
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund...
a month ago
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund Blunden articulates the impulse that
would drive his poetry for the next half-century: “I must go over it again.” Psychically,
there was no Armistice. Whether to purge its memory or...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.”
—Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is:
Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper)
Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
a week ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Josh Thompson
Constraints
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or...
over a year ago
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or restriction
Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration:
I have to be to work by 9a
I have to get up at 7a
I have...
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by...
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in...
10 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I
read in February. I gotta catch up on my
posts.
One big book
down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible.
TRAVEL, let’s
call it
Black Lamb
and Grey Falcon
(1941), Rebecca...
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun'
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also...
a year ago
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter
Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is
a civilized man with...
The American Scholar
Bathing Badasses
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming
The post Bathing Badasses...
5 months ago
Vicki Valosik gets submerged in the history of synchronized swimming
The post Bathing Badasses appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
Steven Scrawls
"Progress"
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions...
a year ago
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s
list of most-visited websites (see Notes for
details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments,
and come to your own...
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buttonhole Strangers on the Street'
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often...
10 months ago
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often decades later, we’re acting on faith, trusting that we and it remain
compatible. That’s not always the case, of course. My younger self is not a reliable critic. For too long I was an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights'
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
3 months ago
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in 1970, the year I entered BG as a
freshman. Today it’s the only institution in the country to have a Department
of Popular Culture. As an English major I hung around with professors who...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest'
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just...
8 months ago
“My mood is
like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work,
just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the
time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live
another forty years and spend the whole...
The Elysian
Am I a Democrat or a Republican?
The case for going label-less.
2 days ago
The case for going label-less.
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down'
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with...
a year ago
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up
the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we
scrawled on the walls of the...
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence"
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
9 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
6 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth'
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The...
12 months ago
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The late
Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I
have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too
often earns contempt...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For?
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Josh Thompson
My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment,...
over a year ago
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment, police brutality, a vaccine, elections, so much politics, China, Tik-Tok, the Twitter-dm-hack-bitcoin-scam-or-was-it-dm-content hack happened.
Tiger King, Cheer, Filthy Rich are...
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance
From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
From our May writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Discussian of General Ideas'
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever...
4 months ago
A friend who
is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve
ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal
House and 1984. Neither have I
read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which
are among the most...
Josh Thompson
Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones"
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not'
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older...
6 months ago
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older texts can identify historical figures and help us decipher obsolete words. As
Joyce advised in the Wake: “Wipe your
glosses with what you know.” My preference with Shakespeare...
Josh Thompson
On Feedback
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By...
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback:
Explicit feedback
, which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss.
Implicit feedback
, which is...
Josh Thompson
Piece by Piece
The following is inspired by
Amy Hoy.
I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...
over a year ago
The following is inspired by
Amy Hoy.
I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be
so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it.
I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!'
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress
out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was
like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the
details of the...
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later.
I value my attention and focus. I...
sbensu
Everybody is the main character
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months.
I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1986
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
8 months ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them.
Both the title...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Are Wary of My Plain-speaking'
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my...
10 months ago
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my younger self had read? Julian
Barnes suggests volumes devoted to “the true nature of war, empire and race,”
which sounds a bit like retrospective virtue-signaling. William Boyd’s...
The Marginalian
How to Eat the Sun: A Blind Hero of the Resistance on Accessing the Light Within and Touching the...
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry...
a year ago
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others'
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19...
11 months ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books
aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife
of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes
Moby-Dick (“our overall...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province'
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by...
7 months ago
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and
held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC.
This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught'
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to...
2 months ago
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams
titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is
more reader-enticing than...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 